The culinary secrets of Russian monasteries

Often located in remote areas far away from cities and even villages, Russian monasteries have always had to produce much of their own food, and many monks and nuns continue these traditions today, with some monasteries playing an important role in supplying regional stores with fresh bread, honey, and even Italian-style cheese.

Typically
living in isolated communities far from cities and towns, monks and nuns have
always had to practice the art of self-sufficiency – before the arrival of the 20th
century and modern transport, most monasteries would have to produce enough
food during the summer months to last them all winter.

In many
ways, little has changed: Many Russian monasteries have their own husbandry and
even those monasteries that are located in cities have farms in the country. Most
have gardens, some even apiaries, but mainly the monasteries are known for
their bread and dairy products.

Land near Moscow

One
hundred kilometers from Moscow stands the Serpukhovsky Vladychny Monastery, a
convent founded in the 14th century. During the Soviet period it was abolished
and reopened only in 1995.

"We've
had auxiliary facilities since we opened the monastery," says Mother
Superior Alexeya. First the nuns acquired goats, then cows. "And when
there were a lot of cows, we said: Where are we going to graze them? Our
acquaintances offered us some land in the neighboring region."

Currently,
the Serpukhovsky female monastery has 25 dairy cows. Fresh milk is brought from
the farmstead every day. The nuns use it to make sour cream, cottage cheese,
kefir and yogurt. Mother Superior Alexeya says that everything is usually eaten
in the monastery, and only in the summer, when the cows produce a lot, is the
extra milk sold to the parishioners.

Besides cows,
chickens and ducks can also be found in the monastery. The nuns also plant
potatoes and all possible vegetables. "Beets, carrots, potatoes - this all
grows in our village," says Alexeya. "But also tomatoes, cucumbers,
zucchini, eggplants. For some reason melon did not grow this year – but there
was some good watermelon. We have many seeds now – we have cultivated an
interesting yellow watermelon."

A look
inside the monastery cellar reveals that the nuns like to stash away food for
the future. In the summer they can tomatoes, cucumbers, and mushrooms, packing
the cans with vegetable salads, with and without oil (in case of Lent), and
make compotes and preserves.

In the
Serpukhovsky female monastery they also bake bread. "In 1999 a Swiss
charitable organization gave us equipment to bake bread," remarks Mother
Superior Alexeya. She says that, unlike the dairy products, bread is also baked
to be sold. This bread can be bought in the nearby town of Serpukhov, as well
as in some stores in Moscow.

Half a ton of flour

The monks
of the Holy Danilov Monastery, whose history dates back to the 16th century, also
bake bread. The monastery is located in Moscow and is famous for being the
residence of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus, Kirill. Here bread is baked
on a professional level.

"We
began working with 50 grams of flour a day," says the monastery's cellarer
Theognost, who is responsible for preparing and preserving the products.
"Currently, in one day we work with half a ton. With this amount of flour
we produce almost 2,500 loaves of rye bread daily, and almost 2,000 loaves of
white bread."

The
Danilov monastery also produces about 12 types of pies, and two years ago the
monks opened a facility for baking cookies. "We even have our own
brand," says Theognost proudly.

Twenty
people work in the monastery bakery. The equipment is German, since Russian
technology is unreliable, says the cellarer. "Baking bread is a very
complicated process. First, the leaven is alive. If there is a bad atmosphere
around the group, the leaven doesn't work and the bread doesn't rise well. To
bake custard bread, for example, you need 18 hours."

The
monastery makes its own wheat flour, and buys the rye flour. The Holy Danilov Monastery
has its own grain farm in the Ryazan Region with a mill and a small elevator,
and even an apiary. The monks make five tons of honey in one season. Next year
the monastery plans on increasing the production of bread – there will be an
addition to the bakery, giving the monks their own “mini factory.”

Trading quantity for quality

In the
last few years, entrepreneurs have begun showing interest in the goods produced
by monasteries. These days there are growing numbers of stores that sell only
natural products in Russia, and those stores nearly always have something that
was produced in the monasteries.

"Mass-market
bread factories are interested not in the quality but in the quantity and price
of the products," says Yevgeny Schepin, director of the Izbenka and VkusVill
communications companies. "It’s like a mathematical exercise: you need to
produce and sell as much inexpensive bread as possible in the least amount of
time. For the monastery bakery, quality is a priority, which is why we work
with them."

Schepin's
companies work with the Vvedensky Tolda Convent in the Yaroslavl Region. For
the last two years the convent has been supplying Izbenka with bread, pies and
gingerbread three-four times a week.

Before
the Soviet period, Russian monasteries were large producers of bread. In
particular, the Spaso-Preobrazhenky Monastery on the Valaam archipelago in Lake
Ladoga in northwest Russia, was one of the largest agricultural centers in the Russian
north.

On the
160 hectares of its arable land the monks would cultivate barley, oats, and rye;
in the greenhouses they would grow melons and watermelons, and in the gardens –
fruit and berries. The island had a drainage and irrigation system with canals
that were almost 70 miles long. The monastery boasted a mechanical dairy farm
with 70 cows and in Valaam's lakes the monks bred fish.

Now,
however, the monastery is turning toward Europe – the monks are learning how to
make cheese according to Italian recipes. The monastery has the necessary
equipment and the cheesemakers were trained in Italy. Such cheese is exotic for
the monastery's refectory, which is used to simpler products: baked bread, sour
cream, canned vegetables and mushrooms.